Media, politicians, and the courts portray college campuses as divided over diversity and affirmative action. But what do students and faculty really think? This book uses a novel technique to elicit honest opinions from students and faculty and measure preferences for diversity in undergraduate admissions and faculty recruitment at seven major universities, breaking out attitudes by participants' race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and political partisanship. Scholarly excellence is a top priority everywhere, but the authors show that when students consider individual candidates, they favor members of all traditionally underrepresented groups - by race, ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic background. Moreover, there is little evidence of polarization in the attitudes of different student groups. The book reveals that campus communities are less deeply divided than they are often portrayed to be; although affirmative action remains controversial in the abstract, there is broad support for prioritizing diversity in practice.

Reviews & endorsements

'Scholars seldom study ourselves - we think we know the answers - and it is hard to study complex and ideologically fraught issues - will people say what they really think? Yet Carey, Clayton, and Horiuchi have done both, in a research project as elegantly designed as it is substantively persuasive. We now know what the vague term 'diversity' means, who wants it and why - and we are even given reason to believe that Americans can rise above polarized controversy. This is a highly valuable study, for many reasons.' Jennifer Hochschild, Harvard University

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Product details

• Date Published: December 2019
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9781108745307
• length: 274 pages

• dimensions: 150 x 230 x 17 mm
• weight: 0.42kg
• contains: 60 b/w illus. 8 tables
• availability: Available